AVR Libc Reference ManualA simple project

Compiling and Linking

This first thing that needs to be done is compile the source. When compiling, the compiler needs to know the processor type so the -mmcu option is specified. The -Os option will tell the compiler to optimize the code for efficient space usage (at the possible expense of code execution speed). The -g is used to embed debug info. The debug info is useful for disassemblies and doesn't end up in the .hex files, so I usually specify it. Finally, the -c tells the compiler to compile and stop -- don't link. This demo is small enough that we could compile and link in one step. However, real-world projects will have several modules and will typically need to break up the building of the project into several compiles and one link.

$ avr-gcc -g -Os -mmcu=atmega8 -c demo.c

The compilation will create a demo.o file. Next we link it into a binary called demo.elf.

$ avr-gcc -g -mmcu=atmega8 -o demo.elf demo.o

It is important to specify the MCU type when linking. The compiler uses the -mmcu option to choose start-up files and run-time libraries that get linked together. If this option isn't specified, the compiler defaults to the 8515 processor environment, which is most certainly what you didn't want.